I think I'd better make a few remarks about the difference between parts and attributes.
By definition, a part of an entity is something that can be physically separated from the entity. When we separate a part, that part becomes a "new" entity.
So, the question is: is a statement in a document a "part" which can (will) be removed? The answer is not immediately obvious to me. For example, we could forbid editing, i.e., we could require a document to be completely replaced by a new document. When we build a context consisting of more than one document, will we allow the use of a single statement, excluding the rest of the document? When a document changes, do we want to talk about which statements were changed?
First, the above questions need to be answered; then we can see if a statement is a "part" or an "attribute".
============
Dick McCullough
knowledge := man do identify od existent done
knowledge haspart list of proposition
----- Original Message -----
From: Richard H. McCullough
To: seth@robustai.net
Cc: Danny Ayers ; David Menendez ; rdfig
Sent: Saturday, November 23, 2002 1:45 PM
Subject: Re: Contexts (spinoff from copy and wrap rdf statements)
You are absolutely right.
Pretending a "part" is an "attribute" may cause trouble as we try to use it.
I'm saying: from my experience, it's easier to work with attributes than with parts.
Maybe it's time for me to do some more work with parts.
============
Dick McCullough
knowledge := man do identify od existent done
knowledge haspart list of proposition
----- Original Message -----
From: Seth Russell
To: Richard H. McCullough
Cc: Danny Ayers ; David Menendez ; rdfig
Sent: Saturday, November 23, 2002 12:06 PM
Subject: Re: Contexts (spinoff from copy and wrap rdf statements)
Richard H. McCullough wrote:
I would consider the set of statements in a document (or graph) to be a property/value of the document (or possibly a "part", but I think that's an unnecessarily complicated viewpoint). Now you can talk about that property/value, define a truth-value property for it, etc.
I don't think it is a property in the sense of rdfs:Property. But a statement is certainly a part of a document, and a triple is certainly a part of a graph. I don't see any reason we couldn't assign truth values to statements that talk about these things... formally:
language: Semenglish
{<foo.rdf> docContains "A r B."} entails {<foo.rdf#ThisGraph> graphContains {A r B}}.
ThisEmail author (Seth Russell).
(Semenglish Primer) seeUrl <http://robustai.net/mentography/semenglish.html>.
============
Dick McCullough
knowledge := man do identify od existent done
knowledge haspart list of proposition
----- Original Message -----
From: Danny Ayers
To: Richard H. McCullough ; David Menendez ; rdfig
Sent: Saturday, November 23, 2002 3:53 AM
Subject: RE: Contexts (spinoff from copy and wrap rdf statements)
If you let a resource refer to itself, you can just say
resource has
graph = "...",
document = "..."
(however you want to say it in RDFS)
so the graph would have a reference to itself and the document,
and ditto for the document.
Having such a "cross-reference" doesn't cause any problems, does it?
Probably not.
Aren't the graph and document "isomorphic", i.e., logically equivalent, or
are you talking about a different kind of document here?
Hmm - that's the crunch I suppose. A HTML document can be a resource and have a URL that can be used as its URI. But do we consider an RDF document in the same circumstances a closed box, or a bunch of 'free' statements..? Similarly, if the HTML doc (let's make that XHTML+XLink) made RDF-friendly statements ("myMetaDataHere: me.rdf") how available to the referrer should those statements (and anything else they refer to), be?
I guess this is back into the "dark triples" idea.
If statements are directly asserted by this then they lose their provenence, if they are quoted/reified then that brings up the question of unquoting/unreification mechanisms.
Hmm...
Cheers,
Danny.